


The Dealt Hand

by solsticezero



Series: Dealt Hand 'Verse [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, episode fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solsticezero/pseuds/solsticezero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fourth episode, beginning where the third ended. In which Sherlock and John play the cards dealt to them; featuring running, puzzles, running, a card game analogy, and more running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dealt Hand

**Author's Note:**

> This was put up originally on [livejournal](http://solsticezero.livejournal.com/36464.html) in August 2010, but I've only just realized that I never put it here. So, if you've already seen this in the past, my apologies. If you have not, then please enjoy. A bit of dialogue between Sherlock and Moriarty was inspired by the 1945 Holmes movie "The Woman In Green." Part of John's blog was inspired by "The Three Garridebs" by Arthur Conan Doyle. If you are interested, there is also a [podfic](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/dealt-hand-audiobook") read by the incredibly talented [pandarus](http://pandarus.livejournal.com/). (The audiobook contains the coda, The Ten Gunman, which will also be uploaded to AO3.)

_“You can’t be allowed to continue. You just can’t. I would try to convince you, but -- everything I have to say has already crossed your mind!”_

 _“Probably my answer has crossed yours.”_

 

John Watson sat in the half-dark of the swimming pool and listened to the whine of panic in his ears. There were ten eternal seconds to watch his gun at the end of Sherlock’s arm, to trace the trajectory from the muzzle to the bomb and back again; sure aim, who could miss? An absolutely clear shot, completely vital if they were going to end this here. The pinpoints of red light from the hidden gunmen crossed and jagged on Sherlock’s back, and John took one deep breath and waited for the blast to come, refusing to look at Moriarty’s smug expression. If this was his last moment, it wasn’t going to be marred by that bastard.

The shot came.

And he was up, off of the ground, Sherlock gripping his arm and pulling him, running until John found his own legs and he pushed faster, with the bang alarmingly loud and still rattling between his ears, echoing off of the pool walls. They slipped through wet patches and kept going, emerging into the confusion of streetlights and taxis and people, running hard, every sound whited out by the amplified gunshot except for the loud pounding of his heart. They kept moving, kept sprinting through the streets, dodging into alleys, Sherlock leading every turn, climbing up fire escapes and jumping narrow gaps between rooftops, flying down a set of emergency stairs --

And, finally, ending up in a tunnel, alone, in the dark.

John leaned against the curved stone wall of the tunnel and pulled air into his lungs, coughed it out again, chest leaving, legs burning and nearly buckling beneath him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sherlock bent over his knees, gasping.

“It’s a good thing you’re a crap shot,” John managed after a minute, turning to slide down the wall of the tunnel and sit on the damp ground.

“I’m an excellent shot,” Sherlock wheezed, still bent at the waist. “I was trying to miss.”

“Then it’s a wonder we aren’t dead.”

Sherlock straightened up. “I said I’m an excellent shot.”

John laughed, half-hysterical. “Yeah? The Golem was, what, seven, eight feet tall? Broad-shouldered? And you couldn’t hit him from a few meters?”

“It was dark,” Sherlock said, waving a hand and checking the gun. “Loud. I’d just been strangled half to death.”

John shook his head. He rubbed both hands through his hair. “What did you do back there?”

Sherlock dropped the magazine out of the gun. “I fired the shot next to the bomb,” he said. “While Moriarty and the men with the guns were distracted by the certainty that they were _quite_ dead, I pulled you out.” He pushed the magazine back in with a _click_. “No need to thank me, all part of the plan.” He held the gun out to John, butt-first.

John took it. “Pardon me if I’m not convinced that was the plan. Why the look?”

“Look?”

“The look! The ‘what do you think’ look before you pointed the gun at the bomb.”

“An act,” Sherlock said simply, crossing his arms. He looked amused. “Although apparently not for you. This makes twice tonight you’ve been willing to die for the greater good. What _do_ they teach you in the army?”

John sighed and held up a hand. Sherlock took it and pulled him to his feet. Then he smiled slightly.

“I may have missed by a few centimeters.”

John stuffed the gun into the back of his trousers. “Not an act, then.”

“I take my chances as they’re given to me.” Sherlock started off down the tunnel. “Come along, Dr. Watson. There’s a Detective Inspector just waiting to hear about our eventful evening.”

John started after him. Their shadows stretched tall along the curvature of the stone walls, and John watched them move, wondering what was next. This was only a temporary reprieve. If Moriarty wanted them dead, then he wasn’t going to stop until it happened. He didn’t seem the type to give up, particularly not on two people who continued to give him so much trouble. John could tell that Sherlock was thinking the same; he was quiet, walking ahead, head down and not looking where he was going.

There was a chime from Sherlock’s pocket when he was halfway down the tunnel. He stopped, then reached in and pulled it out to look at the text message.

“What is it?” John called. He hurried to where Sherlock was standing, and Sherlock turned to him. He held the phone out to him, the screen washing both of their faces blue in the dark.

 _Watch the news. --M_

“Watch the ne-- Hey!” Sherlock was already running down through the tunnel, off towards the road. John chased after him, stumbling onto the pavement amid groups of people coming out of the pubs and the late-night shops, girls in clothing inappropriate for the cold, tourists looking at maps and glancing at him fearfully. Sherlock’s head and shoulders were hurrying away to the right, and John followed, skirting drunken college students and teenagers with headphones plugged into their ears, entirely oblivious to the world around them. John wondered how Sherlock managed to easily avoid crashing into anyone as he accidentally knocked a packet of crisps out of some poor bloke’s hands. He apologized while moving and saw Sherlock duck into an all-night sandwich shop. He caught the door, making the bells chime loud, and stood in the doorway, breathing hard.

Sherlock had the remote control to the television hanging above the counter and was flipping through the channels, the man at the cash register staring at him, along with most of the patrons.

“What do you think you’re bloody doing?” the man asked, Welsh vowels rounding out the words. He was so surprised that someone would just storm into his shop and start changing the channel on his television that he failed to notice a customer trying to pay him for their meal.

“Turning on the news,” Sherlock murmured. “You don’t mind, do you? Of course not.”

“There’s Top Gear on! I was watching that!”

“It’s a repeat, I’m sure you’ll see it again -- aha!” He stopped. The BBC News watermark floated in the bottom left corner of the screen. Sherlock turned up the volume.

 _”--deemed responsible for the series of abductions taking place over the last several days. New evidence has been delivered to New Scotland Yard clearly identifying two major suspects in the kidnappings of at least three people, including a ten year old boy.”_

And then they flashed up two photographs. John’s stomach pooled at the level of his shoes. It was them -- him and Sherlock. His was a formal military photograph, standing at attention in uniform with his cap in the crook of his elbow. He looked distant. Angry. The perfect photograph for a wanted man. Sherlock’s was much less formal, a random snap caught at a crime scene, face smoothed with the neutral expression he took on when dealing with the police. Their names were below the photographs. The anchor continued over them:

 _”Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are considered armed and highly dangerous. Any sightings of these individuals should be reported immediately to New Scotland Yard, at the number at the bottom of the screen, or by dialing emergency services at 999.”_

The man behind the counter was now pointing at the screen. “That’s you two.” He looked frightened, and he wasn’t alone. Other customers were now watching them with fear, or pulling their mobiles from pockets and purses and dialing while the number was still on the screen.

John grabbed Sherlock’s arm. “Come on,” he said. He pulled Sherlock to get him moving, and they hurried out of the shop and onto the street, then into an alleyway.

“He gave them false information,” Sherlock said. He was gesturing angrily in the air. “Damn it, John. He gave them false information to make it that much harder for us move around. They’ll be looking for us, now.” He drew a hand through his hair, pacing back and forth across the pavement in short strides. “All right,” he said. “All right.” He stopped. He looked at John.

“Would Sarah mind if we came round for tea?”

 

“We could be putting her in danger. I don’t know why I let you drag her into this.”

“I’m not _dragging_ her. She seemed perfectly willing on the phone.”

They were in Sarah’s building, walking down the hall toward her flat, voices hushed with the automatic reverence of one o’clock in the morning. The bright hall lights hurt John’s eyes as they went, a dramatic difference from the dark outside, and he squinted against them. “How do you even know where she lives?”

“Simple,” Sherlock said. He rapped twice on Sarah’s door. “I looked in your address book.”

“My personal address book.”

“It isn’t personal if you leave it out.”

The door opened, and Sarah stood framed in the doorway, looking a bit frazzled. She stepped back to let them come in. “I didn’t know what to think when John didn’t turn up,” she said, watching as Sherlock swept into the flat and looked around with an appraising eye. “Then I saw the news. What’s going on?”

John shook his head, closing the door. “It’s dangerous to tell you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Sarah seemed about to argue when Sherlock popped his head in from the lounge. “Some tea would be lovely,” he said. He had his mobile pressed to his ear. “Maybe some biscuits. Ah, Lestrade! What on Earth do you think you’re doing?” He walked out of view.

Sarah looked at John, her lips twitching with a smile. “I’ll get the tea, then, I suppose.” She turned to go to the kitchen, but John caught her hand. She looked back at him, and he squeezed it gently. She smiled, shook her head, and kept going.

In the lounge, John found Sherlock pacing with the mobile. “I don’t _care_ , Lestrade. You being on our side hardly helps when all of Great Britain is prepared to lynch us without a moment’s notice.” He listened, still pacing. John sat on the sofa and tilted his head back, closing his eyes and relaxing for the first time in hours, blocking Sherlock out.

He opened his eyes and looked over when he felt the seat shift and watched Sherlock settle himself on the arm of the sofa, his feet on the cushion, then drop the phone into his pocket. “Well,” Sherlock said, resting his arms across his knees, “Lestrade is useless. The information was delivered to Scotland Yard at about ten this evening, just as you were being kidnapped by our mutual friend. How was that, by the way? I never asked.”

“Terrible, thanks. What are they claiming?”

Sherlock waved a hand. “They have evidence connecting you and I to the scenes of crime and to the explosives used to make the bombs. Lestrade wouldn’t go into any more detail. He doesn’t believe a word of it, obviously, but the others--” Sherlock sniffed. “Well, I never liked them anyway.”

John glanced toward the kitchen. “Is it safe, being here? It isn’t quite a secret that I’m dating Sarah.”

Sherlock shrugged. “If his network is as wide as he’d like us to believe, he’ll be able to find us anywhere. This is safer than Baker Street, at the very least. We wouldn’t want to put Mrs. Hudson in danger, would we?”

“But my girlfriend? That’s perfectly acceptable?”

“Really, John, you should try to refocus your priorities.”

John sat back and sighed at the ceiling. “At least with you here I may be able to sleep in the bed for once.”

“There’s always the lilo.”

Sarah came in from the kitchen, carrying a tray with three cups of tea and a plate of biscuits. She walked over and set it on the coffee table. “Sorry it isn’t a better spread,” she said, sitting in an armchair across from the sofa and tucking her feet up. “I really wasn’t expecting anyone but John tonight.”

John shook his head, smiling. “It’s fine,” he said. He leaned forward to take one of the cups. “We were the ones who dropped in unannounced. And possibly brought death and destruction to your door,” he added in a mutter, glancing sideways at Sherlock before lifting his tea.

Sherlock reached out his arm to stop John from bringing the cup any higher.

“How interesting,” he said.

John looked at him. “What?”

Sherlock was peering at the cup. “Fine granules of a white crystalline substance clinging to the rim.” He took it out of John’s hands and peered closer, slipping his small magnifying lens out of his pocket and sliding it open with one hand. “And some floating at the surface, as well. Not very carefully dissolved.”

“Sugar,” Sarah said. She was staring at him, uncomprehending. “I must not have stirred enough.”

“What sort of tea is this, Sarah?” Sherlock asked, bringing the cup right up to his eyes.

“It’s Earl Grey,” Sarah said. “I really don’t know what you’re--”

“Sherlock, really,” John said. “What’s the problem?”

“She’s trying to poison you,” Sherlock said softly.

John sat up straight. “What?”

“And not just you.” Sherlock set John’s cup down and picked up the other one. “She put it in mine, too. Cyanide. Powdered. Can’t you smell it?” He held the cup out to John. “Bitter almonds. Pleasant before you die, I’m sure.”

Sarah watched them, one hand fluttering at the base of her throat. “Why would I try to poison you?”

Sherlock peered back at her, his head tilted with interest. “Maybe it’s because of that scar.” She looked politely puzzled, so he continued. “The one there, on your chin. Almost hidden by your jaw, isn’t it? Virtually undetectable in most lights. Good thing I enjoy detecting the undetectable, eh?” He paused. “Well. Good thing for me.”

John looked back and forth between them. “Would someone,” he said hotly, “please explain what is happening here?”

Sarah stood out of her chair. Her hands were in fists at her sides, her mouth pulled tightly into an angry frown. She dropped the act. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said, her voice trembling with rage, “but I honestly wish you wouldn’t.”

John watched as Sherlock turned to him. “She was a trap,” he said. “A very elaborate, very believable trap. And we fell right into it.” He nodded his head toward Sarah. “That scar on her jaw indicates an abusive relationship in her past, most probably a lover, male, one or two heads taller than she is. The jagged edges of the scar suggest a punch or a back-handed slap from a hand with a jeweled ring on it, maybe something from a team or a university. The jewel tore the skin along her jaw, leaving her with a very small, very important mark. When was it, Sarah,” Sherlock asked, turning to look at her, “that you hired Moriarty to help you kill your abusive boyfriend?”

Sarah cocked the gun in her hands. “Two years ago.”

John was out of his chair with his hands visible the second he saw the gun, seemingly drawn from thin air. Sherlock still sat, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. John glanced down at him, then back at Sarah. “Why--” he started, but he stopped. Her hands on the gun were shaking, a child’s hands wrapped around an adult’s toy.

“I liked you, John,” she said, her voice trembling. “I really did. But you’re never really out of James’ debt. You can never get away from him. When he needs you--” She broke off. Raised the gun a little higher, aimed at the center of John’s chest. “I have to.”

John watched the end of the gun. He was thinking hard, trying to find anything he could do, anything to get the gun away from her. He felt his own weapon against his back but didn’t dare reach for it -- and what if he could get hold of it? She knew he couldn’t shoot her. This was a person he had spent weeks thinking and caring about. And Moriarty knew that.

John seethed silently.

“This isn’t going to end terribly well,” Sherlock remarked suddenly in a lazy drawl. He was looking up at both of them, passive and only vaguely interested in what was happening. “I mean, certainly, Sarah has the gun _now_. She has the advantage. But does she? Really, when you’re looking at it from above. Do you have the advantage, Sarah?”

The gun lowered slightly when Sarah turned her head to look at Sherlock. “What do you mean?” she asked, wary.

“Well,” Sherlock said, drawing out the vowel into nothing. His eyes took on a hard shine while he looked up at her, past the gun and right at her face. His smile was wicked. “You seem a bit useless. It’s no wonder why he hit you.”

The gun was up fast with her strangled shout, and John acted without thinking, incapacitating her arm and pulling the gun away so fast that she hardly had time to react before it was pointed back at her from the end of John’s locked arm.

“I’m sorry,” John said.

She watched him with her lips pressed tight together, hands clenched at either side of her, eyes wide and angry and staring at the gun. “Are you going to shoot me?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

And Sherlock hit her from behind.

She toppled to the floor, unconscious before she hit the carpet.

Sherlock and John looked at each other over her body. “Well,” said Sherlock, shaking his hand out as though his knuckles hurt, “that was distasteful.”

John lowered the gun. “You got her to try and shoot you so that I would take the gun.”

Sherlock crouched and put his hands under Sarah’s shoulders. “It worked, didn’t it?”

John took her feet. “If I’d been any slower, we’d both be dead right now.”

They lifted her up, and Sherlock’s voice was strained with the effort. “Well,” he said, labored, “I was banking on -- your military training -- as well as -- your desire not to see me die.” They put her carefully on the couch.

John stared down at her solemn face, frowning. “She was a plant,” he said. “Right from the beginning.” He watched her chest rising and falling slowly. She looked as if she was only sleeping. A few hours ago he’d been speaking to her on the phone about their plans for the evening. A few _minutes_ ago he’d been apologizing for the inconvenience.

Sherlock folded his arms. “This flat is too nice for a woman who makes what she must in a month. It was strange, but I didn’t say anything, because you do seem to get _so_ upset when I point out faults in other people’s partners. He must have been paying her to spy on you.” He sighed. “He and Mycroft should have drinks.”

John was looking at him. “You could tell there was something wrong with her because of the price of her flat?”

Sherlock met his eyes and paused for a moment. “And I did think it was strange that she wouldn’t sleep with you.”

“How did you -- oh, honestly, nevermind.” John pinched the skin between his eyes and held out the gun. “Take it. I’ve already got one.”

Sherlock reached out and plucked the gun from John’s hand. “We’re certainly playing the criminal mastermind angle to its full potential,” he murmured vaguely. He dropped the magazine into his palm and examined it. “Ah, well!” he said. He waved it in front of John’s face. “At least you know she was quite serious about killing you. Full clip.” He slid it back in place. “That ought to be worth something.”

“I’m touched.” John was still staring at Sarah.

“We should be moving on,” Sherlock said.

“Can I please have five minutes to take in the fact that my girlfriend is a spy who just tried to kill me?”

Sherlock laughed. “I wouldn’t call her your _girlfriend_ if she made you sleep on the--”

John’s phone chimed.

He fumbled for it in his pocket, and Sherlock was already starting around the coffee table and looking over his shoulder when John flipped it open and read the message.

`How’s your sister? --M`

John’s heart stuttered. “He has Harry.”

Sherlock took the phone to read the message again, then quickly handed it back. “Call her,” he said. “On her landline.”

John dialed the number with two thumbs, misdialing twice before he managed to get it right and pressed the phone to his ear to hear it ring. Once. Twice.

An answering click.

“One thousand eight hundred,” said a strained voice on the other end, familiar even after weeks without speaking. “One thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine. One thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight. One thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven--” Sherlock pulled the phone away and put it on speaker. “One thousand seven hundred and ninety-five. One thousand seven hundred and ninety-four--”

“A countdown,” said Sherlock. “Sixty seconds to a minute, times thirty minutes, eighteen hundred seconds. Less than half an hour to find her.” He handed the phone back to John and looked at his watch. (“One thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven. One thousand seven hundred and eighty-six--”) “Hang up,” he said. “If we distract her she’ll lose count.” John broke the connection. “Right,” Sherlock said. He looked up to begin speaking with John.

John was already gone. The front door banged loudly against the wall.

Sherlock followed, running.

 

Sherlock’s knowledge of the layout of London became invaluable when flagging a taxi was no longer an option. John didn’t think he would have been able to take the stillness of a car ride, anyway; the drumming of fingers on knees, the tense countdown of seconds against his watch. It was much better to be running, he knew, with his heart pounding in his ears and always one step behind Sherlock, keeping with him through changes of speed and direction. He knew it was easier to be acting than to be waiting, despite the delay.

900 seconds, fifteen minutes, found them pounding up the stairs to Harry’s flat with the lift out of order. 820 seconds and they were standing at her door, but Sherlock pulled John away and spoke to him in a very low voice.

“This is important,” he said. “We are assuming that she is wired with explosives like the other victims. Along with that, we are assuming that if she makes a mistake, the bomb will be detonated. Therefore we will not talk. Not one word to each other. If we distract her and she loses count, that will be the end of it. Do you understand?”

John nodded. His eyes were on the door.

“Starting now,” Sherlock said. He mimed zipping his mouth closed, then waited.

John kept watching the door for a moment, then looked at Sherlock’s expectant face. He rolled his eyes, then angrily mimed zipping his mouth closed and gestured toward the door in a _get on with it_ gesture.

Sherlock went to the door, drew something small and cylindrical from his pocket and placed it against the peephole. He gestured John over and made him look through. It was a reverser; the flat inside was plainly visible, if dark. It was cluttered, but nothing seemed out of place.

Except for Harry, sat in a chair in the middle of her lounge, facing the door, decked in explosives.

John reached for the doorknob, but Sherlock grabbed his arm and put up one finger, moving to open the door instead, slowly, and slip inside once the opening was big enough. John followed, and walked into Sherlock’s back.

“Seven hundred and eighty, seven hundred and seventy-nine--”

Sherlock, looking at John over his shoulder, was gleeful. He pointed, seemingly at nothing, just the air close in front of him -- but then John saw it. Fishing line, strung between the two walls of the entryway. Crossing and overlapping like the laser security systems in museum heist films, but almost invisible, anchored into the wall in some way that John couldn’t see. The gaps between crossings were just about wide enough for a man to duck through, step over or crawl under. John would have walked straight into them if not for Sherlock blocking the hall.

Through the neat crosshatching John could see Harry, and Harry could see them. She kept counting out loud, watching them with large, round eyes, completely unmoving but for her lips. On either side of her, balanced on two end tables, were two lamps with pull strings. One with a red bulb, one with a green bulb. Attached to the pulls on each was a delicately balanced weight. Attached to the weights -- two ends of fishing line. The setup was becoming clearer by the second, and the countdown made it hysterically easy to keep track of those seconds.

Sherlock put a hand on John’s arm to get his attention, then began to explain the puzzle without talking. He reached out as though to pluck one of the strings in front of him, but stopped short, and pointed at Harry, and to the weights. _If you touch a string,_ he was saying, _one of the weights will fall._ He help up two fingers, nearly touched two crossed strings, and pointed one finger toward the green bulb, and the other toward the red. _There are two strings. One turns on the green bulb. One turns on the red._ What happened if the red bulb was triggered didn’t need explaining.

“Seven hundred and fifteen, seven hundred and fourteen, seven hundred and thirteen--”

Sherlock stepped back and shrugged off his jacket, gesturing for John to do the same. They dropped them on the hardwood floor just inside of the door, then Sherlock reached up and began to trace a string of fishing line down from where it started, knotted around a small metal loop drilled into the wall. John scanned the opposite wall for a similar loop, and when he found it he began to trace the line, mimicking Sherlock, keeping an open palm underneath of it, not touching but not losing it. It started: Sherlock followed one strand of fishing line, while John followed the other. It was impossible to tell so early which one would lead to the red bulb and which one would lead to the green one. It was difficult for John even to keep track of the string he was working on, the crosses were so complex; halfway through the entryway pain began to pulse behind his eyes with the concentrated effort.

The countdown dragged lower and lower.

It was agonizing work, moving painfully slow in to order to not even vibrate the strings. John held his breath and ducked between two strands, lifted first one leg and then another through a gap, kept his eyes constantly trained on his strand. He couldn’t look at Harry, couldn’t look at Sherlock, could only look at the fishing line, staring as he moved his palm below it.

He was only just inside of the lounge, where the fishing line crossed at much wider angles but was that much more complicated, when Harry began to count down through the three hundreds. _Five minutes. A little over five minutes and there is no way that we will make it to the chair in time._ His body ached with holding himself still in awkward positions and with the effort required in moving so carefully. He snuck one very, very brief glance at Sherlock. He was making steady progress, further into the room than John was, and he looked almost -- was he _bored_?

It was then that John noticed. Harry was no longer counting.

“This -- is -- dull -- now,” she said, and the choked words were jarring after almost ten minutes of numbers. Sherlock and John both stood perfectly still, watching her, watching her face as she received the words through her earpiece. “Let’s -- see -- some -- dancing.”

Sherlock and John met eyes through the gaps in the near-invisible wire.

“Ten--”

Sherlock had half a second of shock on his face--

“Nine--”

\--before he started to think, started to look back at the entry hall and follow his own course just by looking. John watched him, waiting, his mouth dry, his heart crashing against his ribs--

“Eight--”

\--as Sherlock began to follow the string in front of him with his eyes, tracing it to the ceiling, to the floor, back and forth over the walls.

“Seven--”

His gaze made it to Harry’s chair, then he looked back and did it again, unblinking, fast, so fast--

“Six--”

\--his head whipping in every direction as he followed the intricate weave of fishing line throughout the entire room.

“Five--”

He paused for just one second.

“Four--”

“Yours!” Sherlock shouted across the room. “It’s yours, pull yours!”

John hesitated.

“Three--”

“John, for God’s sake, the wire!”

“Two--”

John look at the wire, suddenly terrified that he had lost track and the wire hovering above his open palm was no longer the one he’d been following from the foyer, but it didn’t matter because if he didn’t do it now--

John pulled it. A weight fell.

Both bulbs came on. The blinking lights on the explosive vest stopped.

Harry let out a sobbing breath, and John turned. Sherlock let his hands fall back to his sides. “Well done,” he breathed.

“Can we--” John gestured to the rest of the wires, to the chair where Harry sat, watching them and crying.

Sherlock started. “Oh. Yes.” He ducked through the weave of fishing line, no longer careful to keep from touching the strands, and John followed his lead, picking his way through the room toward Harry, who was trying to pull the vest off. When he reached her, he pulled her out of the chair and unclasped it. When it hit the floor, she pushed him angrily, but curled her fingers into the material of his shirt to keep him from moving away, both hands trembling against his chest as she tried to keep herself together.

“You _bastard_ , John,” she said, half-sobbing, trying not to lose control but close to failing. “What the hell are you into?”

“I’m sorry,” John said. He looked away from her face and towards Sherlock, who stood uncomfortable at a safe distance and only raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “I’m really sorry,” John repeated, looking back at Harry.

She pulled away, turning to look at Sherlock. “You’re him, then? The detective flatmate from John’s blog.”

“Oh, that blasted--” Sherlock pointed a finger at John. “I’m burning your laptop when this is over.”

Harry walked over and pushed him, hard, sending him back into the crosshatching of fishing line. A small woman in striped pyjamas, her hair mussed and her eyes puffy and red from crying, she made him lose his balance and tumble into the tangle of wires behind him. “You got him into this!” she shouted. “You almost got me killed, and you’re _joking_ about it? Who the hell do you think you are?”

John came up to put a hand on Harry’s arm. “Harry,” he said. “Let me make you a cup of tea. Sherlock will get this mess out of here.” He caught Sherlock’s eye. “Won’t you, Sherlock?”

Sherlock looked about the flat, preparing to argue, but stopped at the combined heat of their withering glares. He plucked at a wire with distaste. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

 

The kitchen was lit only by a aging bulb over the sink. John leaned against the counter watching Harry, her hands clasped together over the scratched surface of the table. The electric kettle clicked, and John turned to pour boiling water into three mismatched cups.

“I didn’t want to believe that it was really like that,” Harry said behind him. “The way you were writing it. I didn’t think it could be.”

“You thought I was lying?”

“Come on, John,” Harry said, laughing in an altogether unpleasant way. “If I wrote about dead women in pink coats and a Chinese smuggling ring mistaking my identity, would you believe every word of it? I knew you had to write a blog for your – for your therapist, so I thought--” He looked over his shoulder to see her shrug, rubbing at the scratches on the table. “I thought you were making it more interesting.”

John walked over and set her cup down in front of her. “Well,” he said, taking his own seat, holding his own cup in both hands, “I wasn’t.”

She watched him, her eyes on his face, her frown concerned. “This is your _life_ now, though, John. I mean, it’s your _life_. Explosives and puzzles and tall, smart men with stupid hair.” She shook her head. “Real people don’t have enemies, John. Real life isn’t like this.”

John smiled into his tea as he sipped it, not meeting her eyes. “I know,” he said.

“I thought by now, with the war behind you and everything – I thought you’d settle down, get a good job, find a good girl--”

“He found one,” Sherlock said from the doorway. He was dusting his hands. “She tried to kill him. Is that tea?”

John waved him to his mug on the counter. “What did you do with the fishing line?”

“Dumpster. I’m keeping the explosives,” Sherlock said, lifting his cup and leaning against the counter to look at them, grinning. “Experiments.”

“If you blow up the rest of the flat--”

Sherlock waved a hand, bored. “Nothing dangerous. I value our landlady just enough.”

“So you’re Sherlock Holmes, then,” Harry said. She was looking hard at him, eyes narrowed very slightly. He’d put his jacket back on, John noticed. Left John’s in the hallway. How kind of him.

“That’s me,” Sherlock drawled. He was moving his eyes over the walls of the kitchen; cracked paint, dead plants, stuffing showing through the threadbare chair cushions, dirty white lace curtains strung over the window. John felt immediate embarrassment for his sister, as though Sherlock kept his house any better.

“If John hadn’t met you, this wouldn’t have happened to me.”

Sherlock sighed. “If John hadn’t met me, he’d still be walking with a limp and waking up in fever dreams. Priorities, the two of you; work them out, would you?” He moved to the window, twitching the curtain to get a view of the street. “Now, the only interesting question, which neither of you have managed to ask, is why is he doing this?”

Harry looked confused. “Who?”

“A man,” John said. “A criminal. He tried to kill us, then framed us for – well. Lots of things, I suppose.”

“’Lots of things’, indeed, John,” Sherlock said scornfully over his shoulder. “Use your words. Abduction. Murder. Theft of top secret military documents -- _do_ you watch the news, Harriet?”

“I’ve been _sleeping_ ,” Harry said hotly. “It’s three in the morning. And don’t call me that.”

“Oh, you _people_ and your _full six to eight hours_ ,” Sherlock muttered, pressing his fingers to his forehead. “Fine. The question stands.”

“You thought it was the plans,” John said suddenly. Something was tickling at the back of his mind, something half-forgotten. “You were waving the memory stick around at the pool because you thought it was all a distraction to keep you from finding them.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “Why else would he do any of it? It’s too much of a risk, exposing his perfect crimes as imperfect, losing thirty million pounds, drawing the police in just as much as us.”

“He threw them in the pool.”

“What?”

“The plans,” John said. “He threw them in the pool.”

Sherlock looked annoyed. “Yes, John, I know he--” He stopped. His face cleared. “Now why would he do that?”

“What are you--” Harry started.

“Shut up.” Sherlock began to pace the small room, the light of the sink catching the buttons on his jacket, his hands gesturing wildly. “Why would he throw the plans into the pool? They were priceless. He _can’t_ get them anywhere. As much as I dislike my brother, he runs a tight ship – oh, I do so hate nautical sayings – and at the first sign of interest in the plans he would lock them down. When Adam West was killed, he must have substantially increased security. It would be next to impossible to acquire them again. He’s brilliant, he wouldn’t throw away--” He stopped dead in the middle of the room. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, oh, oh!” His smile was growing huge, and he turned his gleaming eyes to John. “I’ve got it!”

“What is it?” John asked. He was already standing.

“Our Dear Jim is a card player!” Sherlock cried. Then he ran from the room, and John heard the front door open and slam shut.

John looked down at Harry. She was staring at him, mouth pulled into a frown.

“This is mad, you know,” she said.

John nodded. “I know.”

She looked uncomfortable. “Be careful. All right? Be safe.”

John smiled. “You, too. And, I’m sorry about--” He waved toward the lounge, but Harry interrupted him.

“Go,” she said. “Hurry up or he’ll leave you.”

John laughed. “No, he won’t.” Then he ran.

 

The pool was still silent and cold; four o’clock in the morning, the low emergency lights shining weak, rippling reflections on the walls. Sherlock crouched at the edge of the water, peering into it, eyes moving slowly along the surface as it lapped against the concrete sides. John stood behind at a distance, his hands in his pockets, watching. “So,” he said. “A card player?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. He kept staring at the water. “You’re an army man, I’m sure you’ve played a card game or two. Poker, blackjack, go fish – they all depend on the cards you’re holding. The right sequence of cards, the right timing, makes all the difference in the game, whether you go home richer or poorer. The cards in your _hands_. Do you see?”

“Not a bit,” John sighed. “And, go fish? Really?”

Sherlock let out an exasperated breath. “One day, I am going to say something, and you are going to immediately understand it, and that will be the greatest day of our lives.” He stood and started to walk around the edge of the pool. “There are two ways to win a card game. One – you win by chance, using the hand dealt to you. That way is less fun, in my opinion.”

“Of course it is,” John muttered. “And who is it that you play cards with?”

“The other way,” Sherlock continued, ignoring him, “is to cheat. I assume you have a reasonable idea of how to cheat at cards?”

John shrugged. “Ace up the sleeve, that sort of thing.”

Sherlock pointed at him from across the pool. “Exactly!” he said. “So.” He took a pool strainer from where it sat against the wall and dipped it into the softly glowing water. “A man who plays the game to win at whatever cost comes to the table with his pockets lined with cards. He palms them into play wherever they’re useful and whenever he won’t be found out.” Sherlock carefully began to lift the strainer out of the water again. “Which brings to mind the thought – it isn’t really playing, is it? Knowing you’re going to win. Sure, outsmarting a table full of people unnoticed is fun for a while, but it isn’t _interesting_.” He plucked something out of the strainer and came back around the side of the pool with the thing dripping in his hand. He stopped in front of John, then held it up in the dim light.

It was the memory stick. No. It was _a_ memory stick, but—

“That isn’t the same one,” John said, staring at it. “It’s different from the one Adam West lost.”

Sherlock twirled it in his fingers. “A classic palm,” he said. “Dear Jim could be a magician.”

“He switched the memory sticks. While he was talking to you. He switched them and threw a fake into the pool.” John was still staring at the memory stick as Sherlock wove it between his fingers. “So he has the real one.”

“Ah,” Sherlock said slowly. “Now wouldn’t it be interesting,” he continued, tucking his other hand into his pocket, “to be sat at a card table with another person playing to win?”

And he pulled out the original memory stick, holding both up together before him. John watched them catch and reflect the rippling underwater lights, a smile forming slowly on his face.

“With two cheaters,” Sherlock said, grinning, “isn’t it just another kind of game?”

 

They paused in the exit to the pool, Sherlock stopping short, almost causing John to walk into him.

“Oh, well that’s just profoundly unpleasant,” Sherlock muttered to himself, still looking at the memory stick.

“What is?” John asked.

Sherlock sighed.

“We’re going to have to see my brother.”

 

Dawn was blooming cold and colorful along the south bank of the Thames as they walked down the now-familiar stretch of litter-strewn beach where the body of Alex Woodbridge had been found. The water glowed pink and orange and the dull grey-blue of a London sunrise, and John pulled his jacket tighter around himself. “It’s freezing,” he muttered.

Sherlock looked at him. “The weather? Really? That’s what you choose to talk about?” He had his own arms crossed tightly over his chest. “Whole lists of topics available to you, not the least of which is my astounding brilliance which you failed to comment on at the pool, and you pick the temperature?”

John said nothing. He kept picking his way beside Sherlock along the dirty shore.

“It _is_ freezing,” Sherlock said finally.

John grinned.

“Your sister,” Sherlock said. “She hates me, yes?”

“Don’t feel too badly about it,” John said, watching the ground in front of him for things he might stumble over. “That tends to be her default reaction to people. Particularly if they get her flat rigged with explosives.”

“ _I_ didn’t put them there,” Sherlock said. He glanced at John, then away. “She didn’t seem to hate you.”

John laughed. “Trust me,” he said, “no love lost there. This was the one in a million chance to see my sister without a bottle. I’m almost grateful.”

Sherlock was watching the opposite bank of the Thames as though with great interest. “You could help her,” he said. “Get her into some sort of program.”

John shrugged, uncomfortable. “She’s a grown woman, she can make her own decisions,” he said, and looked at Sherlock. “And since when do you have an interest in my relationship with my sister?”

“I’m just making conversation,” Sherlock said airily.

“Yeah, well, no need now,” John said. He stopped and nodded ahead of them. “Here comes our rendezvous.”

Mycroft was walking along the beach toward them with a look of extreme distaste on his face. As he came within hearing distance, he called, “You always take me to the nicest places, Sherlock.”

“You’re a bit out of breath, Mycroft,” Sherlock answered as Mycroft came closer. “Are you certain your diet is going well?”

Mycroft stopped in front of them, frowning. “You aren’t terribly cute at five o’clock in the morning, Sherlock. What was it you wanted to see me about? I do hope it wasn’t just to insult me. I’ve a lot of work to be doing.”

“Yes, yes, there are heads of state in Russia to be quietly assassinated.” Sherlock drew the real memory stick out of his pocket. “I believe you were looking for this,” he said.

“Indeed I was,” Mycroft said, looking pleased. “I was beginning to think you were ignoring the case.” The gleam in his eye made it clear that he was _absolutely certain_ that Sherlock had been ignoring the case, for the most part. He reached out a hand to take the missile plans, but Sherlock pulled them back.

“There’s a man after these,” he said. Again he started to twirl the memory stick between his fingers. “He’ll have realized by now that the plans he took from me are actually a few rich text files of some of Mrs. Hudson’s delightful fairy cake recipes.”

“We know about this man,” Mycroft said, sniffing and pulling his suit jacket straight. “We’re doing what we can to take care of him. He won’t be a problem.” He held out his hand. “The plans?”

Sherlock stopped twirling the memory stick. He froze, looking at Mycroft’s outstretched hand. “You’re doing what you can,” he said.

“Well, yes,” said Mycroft. “He has himself grafted into the works rather deeply, but we’re--”

“Doing what you can.”

Mycroft was starting to look annoyed. “ _Yes_ , I said. He won’t be a problem, we’re taking care of him--”

Sherlock turned to John. “Run.”

John frowned, confused. “What? I--”

Sherlock grabbed him and pushed. “Run!”

But it was too late.

There was the sound of the wind being cut by something small and fast, and John clutched his neck, even as he was turning, trying to get away. Pain exploded beneath his hand, but then a sort of drowsiness began to fog around the edges of his mind. He fell to his knees, his body too heavy to hold up. His tongue was asleep. His eyes were closing, taking in a last glimpse of the river, the Thames lapping its shores like the water at the pool. His head hit the grey sand.

In his last few seconds of consciousness, he could hear dulled shouts, then another droning dart.

Then the sound of Sherlock hitting the ground near him, no longer struggling.

 

| |

 

Sherlock gasped awake and rolled over in the sand, clutching his neck where the dart had hit him. His mind was still fogged, but he was conscious enough to be thinking, noticing – sun higher than when he fell; maybe fifteen, twenty minutes had passed – drag marks on the ground and then tyre marks where they’d taken John; a large car, a van of some sort – both darts had come from the same gunman sat on the bridge.

Mycroft stood bent over him, head tilted, looking vaguely interested.

Sherlock grabbed Mycroft’s jacket and hauled himself to his feet on unstable legs. Not trusting his ability to stand on his own, he held hard to the knot of Mycroft’s tie, their faces inches apart. “Where did they take him?”

“Steady, Sherlock, steady.” Mycroft gripped Sherlock’s shoulders, helping him stay upright. He sounded as damnably unconcerned as usual. “If you’ll just give me a moment to explain--”

“Damn your moment, Mycroft!” He pushed Mycroft’s hands away from him, taking an unsteady step backwards but remaining standing, if wavering slightly. “Whatever he’s promised you, he won’t give it. Men like him aren’t to be trusted. Have you learned _nothing_?” He was following the tyre marks with his eyes, considering the traffic at this time in the morning, considering how far they may have gotten and whether he was in a state to catch them, whether he should wait and take the slow route, whether John was in any major danger for the next few hours—

“He didn’t promise me anything,” Mycroft said simply.

Sherlock whipped his head back around to look at him. “What?”

Mycroft had his hands folded on top of the handle of his umbrella, which was nosed into the ground like a cane. He shrugged. “Rather, he didn’t promise me anything of _substance_ , nothing _physical_. He only agreed to leave you be, if I brought you out here. He promised to stop attempting to kill you if I delivered your Doctor – Doctor--”

“Watson,” Sherlock said. He was staring, hands gripped into fists at his sides. “Doctor John Watson, Mycroft, and you _know_ his name. Pretending you don’t doesn’t make you any less guilty.”

“My apologies,” Mycroft said, smiling. “Doctor Watson. But, you see, it was a good deal. Don’t you agree? He would have continued this ridiculous campaign of smearing your name and trying to murder you at every turn. I had it in my power to put a stop to it, and so I did. I’m protecting you, Sherlock.” His smile widened. “Can’t you see it? And in protecting you, I’m protecting my name, as well. We don’t want people looking into _my_ business in connection to this mess, do we? Doctor Watson was an unfortunate casualty, but an expendable one.

“You don’t make friends, Sherlock,” he said. “Surely you haven’t fallen into that old trap.”

Sherlock stared at his brother, his mouth set, his eyes hard.

“You’re a fool, Mycroft,” he said, and his voice was cold. “Nothing but an arrogant fool.”

He turned and began to run back along the beach.

Mycroft shouted from behind him, “I did it to _save_ you, Sherlock! Some gratitude wouldn’t be out of the question, I think!”

His only answer was a rude gesture given without looking back.

 

Sherlock reached the street when the sun was just beginning to shine reflected in the upper floors of office buildings, still deep orange and pink. He stood in the middle of the pavement and thought, hearing and seeing the conversations and people as a blur around him as they moved on, leaving him alone. (He knew that he must look unpleasant, a man covered in sand, wild and angry, because they gave him a wide berth.) He thought about what to do. The car would be difficult to follow, too many large vans in London, even in the approximate radius allowed by the amount of time that had elapsed. There were no clues as to the location of a hideout. John’s phone wasn’t GPS enabled, and even if he was capable of tracking it, Moriarty would have thought of that.

Sherlock hit a phone box with a frustrated cry, making several passers-by jump and move quickly away from him.

Then he heard it.

« Je ne sais quoi qu’est-ce qu’il signifier. Il ne semble pas de raison à moi. »

« Penses-tu qu’il soit quelle sorte de menace ? »

A French couple discussing in hissing whispers nearby. He looked at them. They were bent over a mobile, confused and growing angry as they tried to decipher a text message.

Text message.

Sherlock raced up to them, and without a word pulled the mobile away from the man, turning his back to the couple to read the message.

`Go Home –M`

« Qu’est-ce que tu pense que tu fasses? » the man shouted.

« Exuse-moi, exuse moi. » Sherlock passed the phone back to them without looking, starting to walk away. « Merci. »

« Vas en enfer! »

 _Go home._

A trap, obviously a trap. Perhaps Jim would be sitting there, a gun trained on the doorway, waiting for him. It was too early to tell. But any contact would get him closer to John than he was right now, and he had faced down the barrel of a gun countless times, unfazed. Whatever was waiting for him, it was well worth the risk, to get information.

And it was a pleasant distraction from the outstanding thought making rounds through his mind. The one thing he didn’t know.

 _Why_ had they taken John?

Sherlock set off running.

 

The door to their flat was ajar; he could see a sliver of light on the wall of the landing. He noticed that before anything else, sliding silently through the doorway of 221B Baker Street. The lack of police hovering around the building was something of a surprise, given the release of their faces to the public and the urge to call on sight; one would think that there would at least be an officer standing by in case they returned. Sherlock wrote it off as a conciliatory act by Lestrade, one he was at least marginally grateful for. He’d thank Lestrade if he remembered. He knew he wouldn’t.

The downstairs was silent. Mrs. Hudson was normally out by this time in the morning, visiting neighbors, hearing gossip. Her flat was locked up, dark. Sherlock moved further in to the foyer, careful not to creak the old floorboards, and then to the stairs, staying very close to the wall and sliding slowly, slowly upward, drawing Sarah’s gun from his pocket as he went. At the landing, he stopped, and peered through the very slight gap in the door. He could see nothing out of place, but that meant nothing through such a small opening. He thumbed the safety off of the gun, took a steadying breath, and slipped up along the second set of stairs. Standing against the wall and out of the way, he pushed the door open wide. With a whine, it swung into the room.

Nothing happened. He peered around the door jamb.

And was met with a piano.

There was no one in the flat, but a small table had been dragged to the middle of the floor, and on top of it was balanced a full electric keyboard. He moved his eyes slowly about the room, taking in details, small changes – a few books out of place on the shelves; the piano; the gunshot wall with its vibrant smiley-face, painted with new graffiti in the same gaudy yellow. Numbers, strings of them, separated by semicolons and commas.

  
_1; 4, 2; 30, 17; 3  
1; 8, 3; 100, 34; 2  
2; 2, 0; 63, 7; 4  
1; 9, 4; 89, 42; 6  
2; 5, 5; 341, 83; 2  
2; 1, 0; 113, 2; 1  
1; 6, 4; 92, 6; 4  
2; 2, 4; 1, 48; 3_   


Sherlock furrowed his brow and stepped through the threshold into the room to get a better look at the cipher. Then the door swung closed behind him and a very loud beeping began to sound from the keyboard.  
He turned to open the door again, but the handle wouldn’t turn, as he’d expected. He hurried to the piano to find the source of the beeping, and as he came closer, something sitting just behind it became visible. A row of explosives, with a piece of paper. He leaned over the keyboard and plucked up the note.

 _You like music, don’t you? –M_

The LCD screen of the keyboard was counting down backwards from 300. Five minutes. Less than five minutes. He crumpled the note in his hand and turned to the wall and its painted numbers, thinking fast. Eight series of number groups, four groups per series; two groups of paired numbers, two groups of singles in each line. Alternating ones and twos in the first group, a matching quantity of each type. The second group, pairs of primarily smaller numbers. The third group, much higher numbers for the first part of the pair, but a definite cap on the numbers in the second part. The third group, also capped at small numbers.  
It _looked_ like a book cipher, but there were far too many numbers, and no clues as to which book. The third group looked more like a book cipher than the rest of it, with the first number in the pair seemingly uncappable and the second having a definite limitation. The rest of the line was just a mess of random numbers, no real relationship to each other, no real—

Oh. _Oh_.

“You clever man,” he said under his breath.

It _was_ a book cipher. The alternating _1_ and _2_ were the bookshelf numbers, sitting on either side of the fireplace. The second group was the number of books across and down. The third group was the page number and word number. The fourth group was the number of letters from left to right. Eight series, eight letters, spelling something, something about music. It was the most needlessly complicated and inelegant book cipher ever cobbled together by a human mind, and if the goal of that was to absolutely infuriate Sherlock, then the goal was well met.

But it was almost unnerving, once again; the knowing reference to his past. The pink phone from _A Study In Pink_. The shoes from the Carl Powers case. The graffiti, the foreign couple and the book cipher from _The Blind Banker_. Yet another reason to end John’s internet connection.

He looked back to the keyboard’s LCD display to find his time. _218_ , 3 minutes and 38 seconds left, with the beeping counting off each second loud into the flat. He went to the bookshelves, tucking the gun into a desk drawer along the way.

First bookshelf; four books over, two books down _(he plucked it out; a Russian novel)_ ; page thirty, word seventeen; the third letter. _T_.

He didn’t take notes, just worked, throwing the books on the floor when he was done with them, the beeping ricocheting around inside of his head. It helped him think, helped him keep track, counting down with the keyboard even as he deciphered, fingers trailing along lines of text, finding the right word, finding the right letter and moving on. He worked fast. 191 seconds, _O_. 166 seconds, _Y_. 140 seconds, _E_. 115 seconds, _D_.

 _O._

 _J._

 _O_.

At 30 seconds, he had this:

 _T O Y E D O J O_

Anagrams. Joyed Too, Doe Jot Yo, Ode—

Ode to Joy.

He hurried to the keyboard. He’d had piano lessons when he was a child, but he’d always hated them. The instrument was too obvious, all of the notes laid out in front of you. _Mycroft_ played the piano. The violin was at least something of a mystery, a combination of strings and fingers like a code in itself, finding the correct combination for the correct sound. But perfect recall was what it was, and his fingers found the keys and pressed the childish melody into the air.

Three seconds on the LCD screen found the final note of the short piece hovering extended, and the countdown stopped.

Sherlock leaned against the table and let out a breath.

The LCD screen flashed in uniform letters, `MIDNIGHT.`

Then the door was kicked in.

 

“I just think that the handcuffs are profoundly unnecessary.”

“Sherlock--”

“Do you honestly believe that I have had the type of physical training necessary to reach across this table and kill you with my bare hands before the people on the other side of that mirror could make it into the room?”

“Sherlock--”

Sherlock leaned forward with a rattle of metal on metal. “There is actual danger out there, Lestrade, stalking through London, with John Watson tucked away or _murdered_ and you are keeping me here on information given to you by an anonymous source with nothing but convenient connections linking me to crimes I have been _helping you to solve_ \--”

“Sherlock!” Lestrade shouted, pounding a fist once against the table. “Settle down. If you want me to listen to you, you’ll do it by talking, not arguing.”

Sherlock sat back. He folded his hands together neatly over the handcuff chains. He leveled his gaze on Lestrade.

“All right,” Lestrade said. He sat back himself and pulled over a manila folder. Flipping through it, he continued, “The information that was delivered to us links your credit card with the purchase of the same type of materials used to make the bombs.”

“My card was--”

Lestrade held up one finger in front of Sherlock. He locked eyes and put the finger against his own lips. Sherlock looked rebellious, but resettled himself in the chair and gestured for Lestrade to continue.

“It also has printouts of emails from an address with your website’s domain name setting up a meeting with a known private provider of Semtex. There’s the internet search history from your computer full of keywords pertaining to the case, a photograph of you and John Watson in the area where the Golem was rumored to be hanging about, and, most importantly, your fingerprints at every scene of crime since this mess began.” Lestrade closed the folder, looking at him. “Add to that your record of getting involved in police business and the results of your psychological evaluation, and you’ve got Sally Donovan out in the hallway shaking her head and talking about how she’s always said it would be you putting a body in the ground someday.”

Sherlock watched him, eyes narrowed slightly with interest, expression almost amused. “Do you think I did it, Detective Inspector?”

Lestrade glanced at the two-way mirror, then sighed. “They think you did, Sherlock. They’re sure it was you. They think you set all of this up right from the beginning. They think you’ve been walking us through all of these crimes and puzzles and things just to show off how smart you are, because you need the attention.”

“All of that from a folder full of circumstantial evidence.”

“The fingerprints aren’t very circumstantial.”

Sherlock tucked his steepled fingers under his chin, making his handcuffs rattle. “Fair point,” he said. “Shall I walk you through this one, then?”

“By all means.”

Sherlock gave a little pause, then started. “First; my credit card was stolen the night the smuggling ring was shut down. I didn’t notice because I had no cause to use the card, until I was attempting to buy an authentic human anatomical skeleton from an online auction site, at which point I realized that I no longer had it. I’d given it to John, and he didn’t have it, so he canceled it for me. There’s no amount of money spent on a stolen credit card that would be worth my sitting through twenty minutes of the credit company’s terrible hold music. Now let me see the emails.”

Lestrade extracted the email printouts and handed them over to Sherlock. Sherlock laid them out on the table and peered closely at them. “Do you have a magnifying glass?” he asked at length.

Lestrade just looked at him.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Honestly, it’s as if you people became police through mail order. Here,” he said, starting to rise from the chair, but he stopped. He looked at Lestrade. “May I?” Lestrade gestured for him to stand, so he did, and carefully came around the table to stand beside Lestrade’s chair. “Look,” he said, holding out one of the papers so that Lestrade could see it. “Both email addresses are in all-capitals, in every exchange. The one that you’re alleging came from my domain name is not, in fact, my domain name. You’re looking for the person who owns ‘sclenceofdeduction.co.uk’. The capital _I_ and lowercase _L_ look exactly the same in this font type.”

Sherlock set the emails in front of Lestrade and went back to his chair. “Third; it’s probable that my internet search history contains keywords from every crime ever committed in the history of human consciousness. Do _none_ of you get bored? Googling ‘how to assemble a bomb using plastic explosives’ has proven to be less troublesome than, say, shooting the wall with my flatmate’s weapon. Until now, of course. Now I wish I’d spent more time with target practice.”

“Probably shouldn’t say things like that in the middle of an interrogation, Sherlock.”

“Oh, is that what this is?” Sherlock asked, exasperated. “I thought it was a sentencing hearing. No matter my explanations, it won’t make any difference to this case. And that’s what they wanted. The person who delivered these things to you.” He gestured to the folder, then folded his arms. “They knew this place was only waiting to find a reason to lock me up.”

Lestrade shook his head, looking at the table. “Sherlock, you know that isn’t true for me.”

Sherlock gave him a sideways glance. “Not for you, maybe, Lestrade,” he said finally, in a grudgingly conciliatory voice. He set his hands on the table, palms up, arms stretched before him. “But the longer I stay here, the more time you give the real murderer. He has John,” he said, meeting Lestrade’s eyes imploringly. “The man who is doing all of this has John, and no one but I can do anything to keep him from being killed.”

Lestrade looked uncomfortable. “How did your fingerprints end up in the crime scenes, Sherlock? The woman in the car, all over the dashboard. The second victim’s coat zip.”

Sherlock sat back. He stared thoughtfully down at his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t. It’s as much a mystery to you as it is to me. But I could _find out_ ,” he insisted, punctuating the words, “if you _let me go_.”

Lestrade avoided his gaze and straightened the papers in the folder with a few taps against the table. “We’re going to hold you until we find something that contradicts the--”

“You can’t _hold_ me!” Sherlock shouted, almost rising. “Lestrade, there are more people out there in danger, _John’s_ in danger, you can’t just put me in a cell and hope that it all clears itself up. Let me go out and _do_ something!”

Lestrade stood up, tucking the folder under his arm with an air and expression of uncomfortable resignation. “We can’t just ignore this evidence, Sherlock,” he said, taking in Sherlock’s face of infuriated surprise. “There’s nothing I can do to get you out of here any faster. You just have to – cooperate.” He shook his head. “Let us do our jobs. If it really wasn’t you, then you’ll be free to go. And we’ll look for John.” He cleared his throat. “We’ll have to, anyway. He’s as much a suspect as you are.”

And he left.

Sherlock watched the door swing closed behind him, and felt the churn of angry, cold shock in his stomach.

 

This, Sherlock decided, was the least comfortable bed in Great Britain.

There was the five-by-three cell he’d spent the night in while investigating a Russian arms smuggler, but that was Russia, and at least the _people_ had been interesting, if not entirely friendly. All he had to work with in the holding area of New Scotland Yard was a man who was too drunk too early and a woman who may or may not have been a prostitute, depending on who was asking and whether they seemed capable of paying. Not the most engaging of company. And yes, certainly the least comfortable bed in the United Kingdom. It was hardly even a bed. It was more a bundle of metal bars and a cardboard pillow. Sherlock wondered why any of the criminals he caught ever dreamed of committing crimes; did they not know how terrible the service was?

He lay with his knees bent, one crossed over the other, his arms crossed beneath his head, staring up at the ceiling. It was, finally, quiet. The woman was sleeping. The drunk man had passed out before he’d arrived. Sherlock had kept time by glancing at the guard’s watch when she walked by his cell during her rounds, then keeping tempo in the back of his mind and checking against her watch when she returned. He had kept mostly on track, which meant it was almost time.

Ten hours in a holding cell had not done him any favors. He was no closer to solutions. With no access to research materials and limited interaction with people who would speak to him, he had grown more and more frustrated as time progressed. `MIDNIGHT`, the screen had told him. But midnight _where_? Was it something to do with the puzzle? Perhaps the tramway tunnel where the smugglers nearly killed Sarah? That would make reasonable sense in context with the references the setup was making. Or maybe the pool, working on their rendezvous from the previous night.

The message meant that John was alive, but that was the only thing it told him.

And there were still the niggling _Why_ ’s. Why was John taken? Why would Moriarty set up a meeting? He couldn’t push the thoughts away entirely, and they kept reappearing to bother him, to flaunt the fact that he couldn’t grasp the situation as closely as he wanted to. There were no answers to his questions. If he wanted the missile plans, he got them on the shore of the Thames. If he wanted Sherlock dead, he had ample opportunity. A bomb set to go off when the door to his flat was opened seemed much more understandable than a book cipher tied to a musical puzzle. He was jumping through hoops, and he didn’t know _why_ , and he hated that sensation.

He swung his legs off of the bed and sat up when he heard the rattle of the door, the guard coming around for hourly cell checks. He listened to the dull click of her shoes on the linoleum floor and moved over to the door of his cell, slinging his arms lazily around the bars. As she was glancing into the cell with the unconscious drunk, he called out to her, “Hello!” When she looked at him, he gave a little wave.

She raised an eyebrow, coming down to his cell. “You’re a bit more cheerful than you were. You’ve been staring at that ceiling for five hours.”

“It’s an interesting ceiling,” he said. “How do you know that? You aren’t the guard who came by earlier.”

She frowned. “I am. I’ve been on duty since six.”

Sherlock frowned in return. “Are you certain? I was sure it was some other officer.”

She crossed her arms. “For all I’ve heard about you being all weird and observant—Listen, is there anything you wanted, or can I get on with my checks?”

“I’m a bit peckish.”

“You’ve refused every meal they’ve brought you!”

Sherlock smiled as if talking to a small child. “Which is probably why I’m hungry, don’t you think?”

The guard threw up her hands and looked back at the door to the holding cells. “I’ll see if they can put something together for you, but it’s gone ten by now. They might not have anything for you until the morning.”

Sherlock just kept smiling at her, making it as unsettling as possible. “Just knowing you’ve tried will be good enough for me.”

The guard gave him an uncomfortable look, then continued down the row to check on the probably-prostitute. When she came back toward the door, she stayed closer to the wall than to Sherlock’s cell, but still he smiled at her when she accidentally met his eyes.

“My food, remember,” he said.

“I’ll be back when I can,” she muttered, then walked quickly out of the holding cells.

Sherlock dropped the strange smile and adopted a real one, instead, looking down at the key held between his fingers.

The first rule of pick-pocketing is to unsettle. The rest is nimble fingers.

He waited ten minutes. It was long enough for the guard to have wandered far away to tell friends about how strange the man in the cells is, and he didn’t have time to waste. Gone ten, she’d said. With the meeting at midnight, and still no clues as to where it was being held, he’d need to be fast. He reached around the bars to slide the key into the lock and turn it. He did it slowly, quietly, opening the door carefully so that it would not wake the woman in the next cell, who would no doubt start screaming her head off if she caught him out. He left the key in the door and kept moving, down the row, crouching by the door to the holding cells. A normal doorknob with a normal lock.

One thing about police stations that Sherlock liked was that they never checked your socks.

Sherlock slipped a hair pin into the lock and jostled it a bit, listening with his ear to the wood to hear if there was anyone outside. It was quiet. When the lock clicked, he tucked the pin into his pocket and opened the door very slightly, still crouched low, and looked out. Empty. Just a desk where the guard should be. He slipped out of the door and closed it behind him, then stole off down the hall, wary of anyone approaching.

There was a break room six doors down with a window which opened on an alley. There was a dumpster sitting three floors below it. If the break room was empty, Sherlock could jump down and be out of the building before anyone noticed he was missing. He flattened himself against the wall in the hallway and peered around the doorway into the room.

Of course. Two officers. Sally Donovan and Anderson.

They were on the opposite side of the room, sitting with their coffee and watching the news on a small television. Anderson was saying, “…able to do it from here? This happened two hours ago.”

“Easy,” Sally said, “It was all planned in advance. You don’t think he’d be doing the whole thing himself, do you? He had accomplices.”

He could sneak past them. They were absorbed in the television and their conversation. They wouldn’t notice. The window was open. All he had to do was slip across the room and through it, and he would be gone. He crouched down, looked once more up and down the hallway, then started across the room, keeping behind furniture and keeping their backs to him.

“I’m just surprised the doctor was involved,” Sally said. “He doesn’t seem the type, you know?”

Anderson made a noncommittal noise.

Sherlock stopped. They were talking about him. Two hours ago? What happened two hours ago?  
Sally turned up the volume on the television.

 _“…the explosion rocked the abandoned Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington, London. Police are saying that there is no direct evidence of any foul play, but that an investigation is underway to determine the cause of the explosion…”_

Abney Park Cemetery. About half an hour away by cab, the only way to get there despite the danger of being recognized. Why so far from the city center? But it didn’t matter. He had his location. The explosion was a message. Midnight, the cemetery.

Sherlock got to the window as Sally said, “Shame the freak doesn’t get to see his own handiwork.”

Grinning, he ducked through it and dropped three stories to a pile of cardboard boxes.

He hauled himself over the lip of the dumpster and spilled onto the asphalt, pulling Styrofoam packing peanuts out of his hair and glancing up and down the alleyway. No one to see. Entirely empty. At least half an hour before anyone noticed he was missing, and an hour and a half to make it to the cemetery. He hurried toward the main road to find a cab. Stoke Newington, with one stop along the way.

 

The police had left their floodlights at the scene of the explosion, and they lit the dark grey stone in sharp contrast to the absolute blackness of the surrounding cemetery. The chapel face was intact, with its castleish spire and the round glassless window staring down at Sherlock like one wide Gorgon eye. He stood at the base of the building and followed the creep of ivy across the ancient stones towering above him, his breath frosting in the air. He could see the burn and rubble at the back of the chapel, where the bomb had ripped down the rear wall in a jagged, scorched hole. Destroying a historic landmark to gain his attention. It was something to add to the list.

“Well hello there, Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock spun. Moriarity stood just inside of the light, a few yards away. The darkness was outlined around him, as if he had stepped out of nothing. As if there was no world beyond the chapel. Just absolute dark, absolute silence, and James Moriarty.

“Jim,” he said. “Pleasure.”

“Were they treating you well at Scotland Yard? I hear the food is excellent.”

“Well, you’ll find out soon enough.”

Moriarty smiled. “Tough talk, Mr. Holmes. I like it! Still _trying_. It’s almost sweet.” He snapped his fingers as though just remembering something. “Talking of sweet! I think I know a friend of yours. A bit short, army haircut, _tops_ at kidnapping. Well. The being kidnapped part.”

“Where is he?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.” He looked around himself. “John!” he called. “John, be a dear and come on out into the light, would you?”

There was a sound behind him, and Sherlock turned in time to see John hit the ground after having been thrown through the open door of the chapel. His wrists were tied behind his back, and he was coughing in the dirt. Sherlock hurried over to him and quickly helped him to his feet, checking him over. “Are you all right?” he asked rapidly, feeling John’s skull for injuries, checking his clothes for blood, his eyes for signs of a concussion.

“I’m fine,” John said. Sherlock kept checking. “I’m _fine_ , Sherlock!” He stepped away, and his eyes fell on Moriarty. “I hope you have some kind of brilliant plan,” he muttered under his breath.

Sherlock turned back to Moriarty. “I understand,” he said. “I understand that you wanted the plans, and you wanted to challenge me, to make me fear you. What you could do. But I don’t understand _why_.” He stepped forward. “Why set up the riddles? Why fill John’s sister’s flat with explosives and fishing line? Why give me puzzles you know I can solve? Why tie me to the murders? There’s no _logic_ in it. It’s clumsy. Inelegant. It doesn’t make any practical sense.”

Moriarty pouted. “Oh, Sherlock,” he said, a mournful whine, pressing a hand to his own heart. “You hurt me. Really. I’m hurt.” Then he dropped the hand and smiled again. “But you had it right the first time. A long time ago, you got it just right.”

“What was it?”

“Oh, Sherlock,” Moriarty said, sighing musically. “Haven’t you ever been _bored_?”

John made a choked sound behind him. He turned. There was a bright red dot trained at the center of John’s chest. Sherlock’s hands clenched at his sides.

“I promised you,” Moriarty called. “I said I’d do it, if you kept standing in my way. Burn your heart.” Sherlock whipped his head around. Moriarty put his hands in his pockets and started to rock back and forth on his heels, grinning. “I don’t mean to be _cliché_ , Sherlock. A few months ago, you really wouldn’t have had a heart to burn. It would have been _so_ much more complicated, and _so_ much less fun. It’s very convenient, that John happened to wander in at just the right time. Just the right type of person to get under your skin. Quiet. Loyal. Brilliant, in his own little way. You were almost destined to grow attached.” He laughed. “And now I get to kill him. The only person you care about. How _fun_. I’m not bored anymore. Are you?”

Sherlock glared across the distance between them. “The moment you signal your gunmen, you’ll be dead where you stand.”

Moriarty laughed again. “What are you going to do, Sherlock? _Think_ me to death?” He sighed, and slowly began to walk forward, his arms crossed over his chest. “You keep threatening to kill me, but you never will. And if you _do_ , I’ve said it before. You won’t live to enjoy it.” He stopped a few feet away from Sherlock.

Sherlock stood in the middle of the light, his back straight, his eyes locked to Moriarty’s. His lips twitched upwards, almost amused. “Then we’ll walk through the gates of Hell hand in hand.”

Moriarty laughed. “What a charming picture that would make.”

“Yes, wouldn’t it,” Sherlock said. He smiled. “I really think it might be worth it.”

Moriarty waved a hand.

A shot rang out.

And then another.

 

Sherlock stood in the light holding a smoking gun, and could almost feel the heat of ten tiny red marks against his back. He turned slowly, dropping the gun, his hands in the air. “Stop,” he said.

There was absolute silence from the chapel. There was no one visible, but they were there, somewhere, watching him.

“He’s dead,” Sherlock said. “I’ve killed him. You have no allegiance to him anymore. Whatever he did to help you, and whatever he’s done to keep you here, it’s over. You’re free to go. I won’t chase you. The crimes you hired him for are long over.” His eyes fell on John, lying in the dirt. “If you go now, I won’t find out which one of you shot him.”

One by one, the red dots blinked out. When the last one was gone, he ran to John’s side.

He dropped to his knees and rolled John’s body over, hands shaking, moving faster than he knew he should if it was a –

John was coughing, his hand gripping Sherlock’s arm. Alive. His eyes were cloudy with pain, but he was grinning very loosely. “Maybe you aren’t – such a crap shot,” he wheezed.

Sherlock let out a panicked, relieved laugh. There was blood blooming through the material over John’s right shoulder. He tore off his own jacket and pressed it hard over the wound, making John hiss in pain, John’s hand tightening its grip on his arm. “You’ll match now,” Sherlock said, his voice a little higher pitched than it normally was. “Both shoulders.”

“Oh good,” John said, sarcastic. “I’m going to – bleed out – if we don’t--”

“The police should be here any second.”

John laughed. “How did you – manage that?”

Sherlock grinned. “I had my cabbie call them.”

John grinned back. “You put too much faith in cabbies.”

Sherlock laughed again.

 

 _EXCERPT – OFFICIAL POLICE STATEMENT, DETECTIVE INSPECTOR G. LESTRADE_

 _The body recovered at the scene has remained unidentified. The bullet which killed John Doe is a match to an unlicensed weapon claimed to belong to one Sarah Sawyer. Ms. Sawyer has not been found; there is a warrant for her arrest. The bullet taken from the shoulder of Dr. John Watson is not a match for the Sawyer gun, or for the gun licensed to Dr. Watson, which remains missing. A completed fingerprint analysis confirms that fingerprints at the scenes of crime do not belong to Sherlock Holmes, and are evidence of internal technological sabotage. A police investigation is underway to determine the source of the altered Scotland Yard files. Following the circumstances of this case, and the lack of evidence tying either man to these or any previous crimes, Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes have been released from custody._

 _No evidence has been found to link these crimes to the man whom Watson and Holmes deem responsible, but a criminal investigation is still underway._

 

“They’ll find nothing,” Sherlock said, reading the piece of paper in his hand while holding the door to the flat open for John. “Moriarty was far too smart to leave any links between him and the abductions. The only people who will come forward are you and I. His accomplices all have far too much to lose.”

John stopped just inside the doorway, staring at the wreck of the flat before him. Books everywhere, a table dragged into the middle of the room, numbers spraypainted on the wall over the sofa. Sherlock walked to his side, then looked up from the paper and saw him staring.

“Oh,” Sherlock said. “Hum. I’ll, ah. I’ll just tidy up a bit, shall I?”

John pinched the skin between his eyes with the fingers of his good arm, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No, just leave it. We’ve neither of us slept.”

“Well, that’s no great change for me.” Sherlock moved around him and went to the table, running his hand over the surface. “Used to be a piano and a pile of explosives here. The police must have taken them as evidence. Lestrade can give it to his daughter, I suppose. The piano, I mean, not the explosives.”

“No, I definitely assumed you meant the explosives.” John’s eyes followed Sherlock as he walked around the table. “What _do_ you get up to when I’m not there to shout at you?”

Sherlock looked up with a grin. “Oh, plenty of interesting messes.”

Silence fell between them. John stood still just inside the door, eyes traveling among the mess. Sherlock leaned with his palms against the table, looking at the backs of his hands.

John cleared his throat. “I suppose,” he said, “I suppose I should thank you. For saving my life, and everything.”

Sherlock stood up straight, dusting his hands off and averting his eyes. “No need,” he said. “There will probably be a lot of that in the future.”

John half-smiled. Early morning light fell in through the boarded-up broken windows, finding chinks and gaps through which to pry and light the room in soft lines of yellow. They curled around Sherlock, standing as he was with his back to the light, and found the table, the chairs, the floor, the mislaid books, and John, his shoulder aching and his body tired, but his mind almost peacefully clear.

Sherlock sat on the side of the table, his body tilted slightly back, his arms behind him, keeping him upright. Light fell across his legs, his chest, his arms, and he smiled toward the windows, his head turned just enough so that John almost couldn’t see.

“I’m glad you lived,” he said.

John laughed. “Yeah, well. I am, too, I think.”

Sherlock turned his head to look at him. “You’re not entirely certain?”

John touched his right shoulder. “Depends on how much this starts hurting later today.”

Sherlock stood up off of the table and walked over. “That wasn’t _quite_ part of the plan, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t think there was a plan.”

Sherlock stopped just short of brushing his fingers against the bulk of the bandage under John’s shirt. “Oh?”

“No,” John said. He was looking hard at Sherlock, but trying to look as if he wasn’t. There were nerves under his voice, close to awkwardness, but he ignored it. “I think, for once, you went blundering in without a plan.”

Sherlock paused.

“John Watson,” he said, musingly. “I’ve said it before. I don’t know what I’d do without my blogger.”

John shook his head, amused. “That’s a pretty poor excuse for almost getting yourself killed.”

“Maybe I like the fact that you keep the flat reasonably clean.”

“Maybe you’re full out it.”

Sherlock’s grin twitched wider. “Maybe I’m that.”

John cleared his throat and pulled away. “Now that we’ve proven what manly men we are,” he said with sarcasm, “you can make up for getting me shot by cleaning the flat while I go and sleep for four days.”

“I offered. You declined.”

“Yes, well, I’ve taken it back.” He was walking for the door. “And call someone to fix the windows, would you? I don’t care how long you have to listen to the hold music.”

“John,” Sherlock said.

John turned his head back round, already reaching for the doorknob. Sherlock had a hand on the back of his neck, an awkward position, his eyes pointed down and away. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

“It’s all right,” John said, his voice softening slightly. “Really. I understand.”

Sherlock dropped the hand to his side. “I don’t want this to happen again,” he said.

John shrugged, and the action made him wince slightly. “I signed on for it. You didn’t, but I did. You can say the word and I’ll leave.”

“Do you want that?”

“No.”

Sherlock shook his head. “We are irrational creatures, John.”

John sighed. “Whatever you say, Sherlock. Good night.” He opened the door.

“Good night, John,” Sherlock said from behind him. “Sleep well.”

John left, and the door shut with a click.

 

 _DECIPHERED MESSAGE DELIVERED TO ANONYMOUS RECIPIENT FROM ANONYMOUS SENDER  
m expected to recover. body at scene replaced, records of victim wiped. continue watching. s holmes, j watson still a threat. burn this message._

 

\--------------------------------

 **The Personal Blog of John. H. Watson**

 

I've taken a few days before writing this one out. I've needed it, if I'm being honest. Getting shot in the shoulder does that to you.

Sherlock is downstairs watching the men who are fixing up the wall for us. He's worried they'll destroy something important. I don't know why he insists on keeping every piece of paper he ever touches and then piling the stacks of folders all about the flat. It makes it difficult to move down there, and almost impossible to not knock things over. (Is that a split infinitive? "to not"? I haven't written anything that someone else read since university. Not that it matters, being the internet. Ppl tlk lyk ths hr.)

He tracked down the now-defunct (LONG-defunct) company that manufactured the wallpaper Mrs. Hudson had on that wall and is having it replaced with more of the same. I often have no idea why he does the things he does. That wallpaper is hideous. But he was insistent.

So, as I've mentioned, I was shot in the shoulder a few days ago. It was not a good time, all told; I've been kidnapped twice since last I updated. Both times by the same man. Moriarty. The man who was running the game. The first time, I was on the way to Sarah's, and they knocked me out and bundled me away into a car. I woke up with a bomb strapped to my chest and a man standing over me.

Moriarty doesn't look like the sort of man I thought he was. He's short, young, probably younger than Sherlock. He has a strange cadence to his voice, like an American attempting four European accents at once. But I'll admit that he is frightening. He seems poised at any second to lash out and destroy something because it seems entertaining.

He fed me lines, the way he did for his other abduction victims, but at first he did it so that Sherlock would think that _I_ was the one behind the game. The look on his face. I honestly... But it didn't last long. Moriarty came out, made his revelations in perfect supervillain style, while I'm stood there with enough explosive power to bring down the block under that horrible puffy coat. It was all just a threat. A glimpse of the sorts of things he _could_ do, if Sherlock kept getting in his way. Killing people, killing _me_ , with the wave of his hand. Sherlock thought it was about the Bruce-Partington plans, but it was just about power. Moriarty made his threats, then he left.

This is where...

I'm not good at this, writing out my life this way. Certainly not the way my therapist originally meant for me to do so, pouring out my feelings so that strangers on the internet can look at them. Just the _word_ "feelings" makes me shudder inwardly, to tell you the truth, and I can't much change that.

But I can say that it was worth it, worth all of it, the kidnapping and the pain and the fear of being killed there in a dark pool in the middle of the night -- worth it all to see Sherlock's hands shaking when he ran to pull the explosives off of me. As difficult as it is to say. I can't tell you why it didn't occur to me before, that Sherlock cared about me. I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind, I assumed that I was an amusing nuisance to him, mostly just another skull to talk at, but this one able to run quickly and shoot straight and deduce a cause of death. A slightly more useful Yorick. But, no. It was the most emotion I've ever seen him show, throwing the coat away from us across the pool floor, pacing up and down, agitated. It was -- it was good to know, I suppose. I had never been bothered by the idea that Sherlock didn't form attachments the way most people do, because, as I say, _feelings_ , but the revelation that he honestly did care whether I got out of the situation alive was at least an interesting one.

Then, of course, it all went to hell.

Nothing was what it appeared to be. Moriarty still tried to kill us. It turned out that Sarah was in his pocket from the beginning. He distracted us by putting Harry in the middle of a puzzle. He made a deal with Mycroft and kidnapped me _again_. Sherlock was arrested for what Moriarty did, then he broke out of jail. He came and found me. He killed Moriarty. And there's the story.

But it isn't, not really.

Moriarty worked with emotions. I don't think he had a single one of his own, but he saw them in others, and he used them against his enemies. He knew that Sherlock cared for me -- better than I did, at the time -- and kidnapped me the first time as a warning. At the pool, when I tried to save Sherlock by grabbing Moriarty from behind, he said I'd shown my hand -- and he was right. When I saw the red dot on Sherlock's head, some gunner waiting to kill him at a word, I had to let go. We were in the same boat we would have been in, but I couldn't let it be my fault if Sherlock died, and that is the difficult part of this. We, human beings, we become irrational when emotions are involved in our decisions. But that makes Sherlock and I different from a psychopath like Moriarty, and that's a kind of difference that I am in favor of.

It was an emotional decision that killed Moriarty. Sherlock thought I'd been killed, so he shot him. It was that simple.

I don't know if this is the first man Sherlock has ever killed. It seems a strange thing to not know (not to know? infinitives) about a person, but Sherlock has never asked about the things I saw in the army, so he has no idea of my record, either. He doesn't seem troubled by it, but he rarely seems troubled by anything like this. The only thing that troubles him is boredom.

He got it wrong, though. Twice, actually. The same thing wrong. He thought it was about the plans, and even when we found that Moriarty had kept what he _thought_ were the plans, and hadn't thrown them into the swimming pool -- that still wasn't his reasoning. It was boredom. Like Sherlock, boredom motivated him to do ridiculous things. Sherlock shoots the walls of our flat. Moriarty blew up buildings and tried to kill us. Sherlock gets it wrong sometimes. I knew he must, but it's strange to see, and I haven't mentioned it, because -- well, what do you say?

I think the men downstairs are finishing up. I'm sure they're tired of Sherlock underfoot. I've been tired of it, too; he's been in my room for hours on end these past few days, pacing, or sitting with his knees tucked up on the chair across the room from my bed, talking to me about the things he thinks about, the cases he's worked before, the ridiculous things people have said or done in his presence that he still doesn't understand. I can't move about with my shoulder (matching, now), so I just sit and listen.

I suppose it isn't terrible. Better than that flat I had when I first arrived back. Certainly less quiet.


End file.
